In the nuclear power industry, much effort is spent analyzing potential plant accidents. While the likelihood that any of these events would ever happen is extremely small, the analyses are an important component of ongoing research in the nuclear industry. These studies help engineers further reduce the risk of plant accidents. One way that engineers around the world participate in accident analysis is through international standard problems (ISPís). An organizing body defines a standard problem, and researchers from various countries independently work to solve it. In one recent study, sponsored by the Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) within the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the problem consisted of using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to predict boron mixing in the downcomer of a pressurized water reactor (PWR).

A demonstration will be given which includes the entire process of setting-up, running and analyzing a small industrial furnace. This will include:

import of IGES geometry

specification of fluid domain and relevant physics

application of boundary conditions

application of initial conditions

setting solver parameters

generating the unstructured mesh

running the solver

post-processing the results

Finally, a questions and discussion session will be held which will allow participants to better understand how CFX can solve their specific problems. All that is required is Internet access and a telephone.

TRANSOFT International announces the release of Version 4.2 of the CFD software, fluidyn-NS.
This version includes, in addition to the traditional CFD modules, the simulation of
structural/thermal/acoustic interaction with flows.

The performance, speed and user-friendly features have been enhanced in Fluidyn-NS version 4.2:

The addition of new solvers, thereby completing the range of finite-volume solvers available in fluidyn-NS. Thus the solution accuracy and speed are optimised for all kinds of flow, structural, heat transfer and acoustic interactions.

The parallelization of the existing solvers. Currently, fluidyn-NS can run on PC clusters (LINUX systems) as well as on multiprocessing workstations (UNIX).

The integration of fluidyn-NS, fluidyn-FSI (Fluid-Structure Interaction), fluidyn-CHT (Conjugate Heat Transfer) and fluidyn-CAF (Fluid-Acoustic Coupling) solvers under one single interface.

A research firm for multimedia and graphics, Jon Peddie RESEARCH, announced the results of a recent study that once again demonstrates that the graphics sector outstrips technology industry trends with 11% growth
predicted for the graphics workstation market in 2002.

The study also found that more NVIDIA graphics boards were shipped in Q3 & Q4 2001 than any other supplier.

Cadence
has an article for PC buyers entitled The Workstation You Deserve. The article gives a brief, but decent introduction to the standards you should look for when purchasing an engineering workstation PC.

Buying computer hardware can be confusing--not only do you need to worry about performance and price, but you also want assurance that it will work well with your current system, as well as with tomorrow's. Now's the time to learn how to shop.